Boston College has announced a $50 million gift from trustee associate Margot C. Connell for a new student recreation center.

The gift, part of BC's Light of the World fundraising campaign, will support construction of a 244,000 square-foot, four-story facility to replace the university's Flynn Recreation Complex. Features of the new center, which will be located on the former site of Edmond's Hall on Thomas More Road, include a state-of-the-art fitness center, jogging track, natatorium with lap and instructional pools, wood-floor basketball courts, tennis courts, two multi-activity courts, and multipurpose rooms for spin, yoga, and fitness classes. The facility, which is scheduled to open in the summer of 2019, will be named in honor of the Connell family.

Margot Connell, chair of Connell Limited Partnership, is the mother of six BC graduates and the widow of William F. Connell, '59, a longtime BC trustee for whom the School of Nursing is named. Born and raised in Ossining, New York, she received her BA from Michigan State University and taught math and science in New York and California. In addition to her and her late husband's many activities in support of BC, Connell established the Connell Nursing Research Scholars Program and the Connell Ethics Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital's Institute for Patient Care and provided support for the Connell and O'Reilly Families Cell Manipulation Core Facility and the Connell Family Fund for Melanoma Vaccine Development at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

"Margot has been a matriarch of the BC community who has witnessed first-hand the positive effects that a Jesuit education of the mind, body, and spirit can have on students," said BC president William P. Leahy. "We are grateful to her for her generosity in naming this facility."